A dedication ceremony for the newly established
Benjamin T. Rome Deanship in the Whiting
School of Engineering will take place at 4 p.m. today, Oct.
6, in Shriver Hall Auditorium on the
Homewood campus.

Earlier this year university trustee emeritus A. James
Clark, a leading commercial builder,
committed $10 million to endow the deanship in honor of his
mentor and business colleague Benjamin T.
Rome. The gift provides a permanent stream of unrestricted
support that the school's deans — present
and future — will be able to invest strategically in
faculty, students and programs.

At the dedication ceremony, the Whiting School's
current dean, Nicholas P. Jones, will be
recognized as the first to hold the endowed post.

Pamela P. Flaherty, chair of the university's board of
trustees, will open the program with
welcoming remarks. The speakers will be Clark; President
William R. Brody; Provost Kristina M.
Johnson; Ross B. Corotis, the Denver Business Challenge
Professor of Engineering at the University of
Colorado; and Jones.

Immediately following the ceremony, a reception will
be held on the Wyman Quadrangle.

The Benjamin T. Rome Deanship becomes the third
endowed deanship in the nine schools at
Johns Hopkins. In 1997, Frances Watt Baker and Lenox D.
Baker, both physicians and double-degree
graduates of Johns Hopkins, endowed the deanship at the
School of Medicine. In 1999, international
telephone and cable television entrepreneur J. Barclay
Knapp endowed the deanship of the Krieger
School of Arts and Sciences in memory of his father.

In announcing his gift earlier this year, Clark said,
"Ben Rome was not only my first boss but a
wonderful mentor as well. I owe much of my success, and the
success of our business, to Ben. He was a
great friend and teacher, and I am honored to be able to
memorialize his name at his alma mater."

Rome, who died in 1994, was a 1925 civil engineering
graduate of Johns Hopkins. He received an
honorary doctorate in humane letters from the university in
1982. Rome generously supported the
university's School of Advanced International Studies,
especially its China Studies Program. One of
the two SAIS buildings in Washington, D.C., bears Rome's
name.

Rome was president and CEO of the George Hyman
Construction Co. in Washington, which was
founded by his uncle. Rome hired A. James Clark shortly
after Clark finished college. In the late
1960s, Clark succeeded Rome as president of the Hyman Co.,
which later became known as the Clark
Construction Group. He is now chairman and chief executive
of Bethesda, Md.-based Clark
Enterprises, a holding company for a variety of businesses,
including Clark Construction Group.

Clark said his gift in Rome's name also was meant to
express his confidence in the current
leadership of the Whiting School. The present dean, Jones,
a former chair of the school's Department
of Civil Engineering, was appointed to the post in August
2004.

Clark is a former member of the board of Johns Hopkins
Medicine. He previously donated $10
million toward construction of a three-story building for
biomedical
engineering research and
education on the university's Homewood campus. That
building, named Clark Hall in his honor, opened in
2001.